Award-winning skipper Sean McCarter will be in attendance at an event in Strabane on Monday to encourage unemployed people over the age of 18 to apply for a special bursary scheme to train alongside the crew taking part in the 2015-16 Clipper Round The World Yacht Race.
Skipper Sean McCarter is welcomed home by Derry Mayor Brenda Stevenson.
Derry City Council are hosting the bursary information event with Strabane District Council at the council offices in Strabane on Monday, February 23rd at 11am.
The event will be attended by Sean McCarter who skippered the Derry-Londonderry-Doire entry in the 2013-14 Clipper Race which received a hero’s welcome when it headed the Race fleet during its homecoming stop-over in Derry for the Legenderry Maritime Festival in June last year.
The Mayor, Councillor Brenda Stevenson and Dan Kelly, Chairperson of Strabane District Council, will also be in attendance and they urged potential bursary applicants from both council areas to attend.
Cllr Kelly said: “This bursary scheme offers a tremendous opportunity to train and work alongside people from different parts of the world. It also provides the ability to learn new core skills which could open up exciting future career opportunities.”
Derry-born Sean McCarter, who will travel from his current base in Palma to attend Monday’s information event in Strabane, encouraged as many people as possible from the Derry City Council and Strabane District Council areas who think they may be eligible to apply for the bursary scheme, to come along on Monday morning.
He said: “Some of the people who have taken part in previous Clipper Round The World Yacht Races used their pensions and re-mortgaged their houses to raise the necessary funds, so for somebody to be able to gain the training experience for free is unbelievable.”
Sean, who was awarded the 2014 Rod Stephens Trophy for Outstanding Seamanship by the Cruising Club of America (CCA) in recognition of the way he directed his crew during the man overboard rescue in the harsh northern Pacific Ocean last March, said joining the Clipper Race team would be a life-changing experience for the successful bursary winners.
The ‘Your Next Chapter’ bursary is open to people aged 18 and over, who are currently unemployed and participating in an employability programme or in receipt of benefits, living in the Derry City Council or Strabane District Council areas. The selected participants will spend four weeks undertaking the full crew training experience at the Race’s Gosport HQ.
A former Royal National Lifeboat Institution volunteer who learnt to sail on Lough Swilly in County Donegal at just five-years-old, Sean will be joined at the Strabane event by Matthew Plummer (46), a previous local bursary winner who completed the training and sailed from San Francisco to New York in the 2011-12 Race, to talk about their experiences.
Speaking about the bursary scheme Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, who founded the Clipper Round The World Yacht Race 19 years ago, said: “Sailing provides the opportunity to develop so many core skills that are invaluable throughout life, such as discipline and honesty, because your success and survival is down to a real team effort. Our training challenges people mentally and physically, but also brings a remarkable sense of achievement when you reach your goal.”
‘Your Next Chapter’ follows the success of the ‘Back to Work’ bursary project that Derry City Council ran in partnership with the Clipper 2011-12 Race. Of the five finalists who were each selected to sail a leg of the race, four ended up in full-time employment or a placement as a direct result of the scheme. All of the participants agreed that the scheme had a positive effect on their future employment.
Those interested in taking part are urged to apply by downloading the application form available online at www.derrycity.gov.uk/clipperrace. The closing date for application is March 9 2015. Successful applicants will be required to be interviewed at the end of March and be available to travel to England for level 1 and 2 training in early May and for level 3 and 4 training at the end of June/beginning of July.
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